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Sick kid=less garden time
I’ve been keeping up with picking the Chandler and summer strawberries and some compost turnings, but little else this week. My little sweetie pie missed 3 days of preschool due to being sick. And he’s been clingy!
Today he and his dad went to the park and grocery shopping, and I got out to the garden. I picked a quick basket of berries, then fertilized: the corn and beans, the new strawberries, the tomatoes, the greens, the potatoes, and the old strawberries. Yay! Then I hoed the mostly unplanted new sunflower bed and part of the one I planted some 10 days ago. I was on the phone with my friend who was complaining that it was 82 in San Francisco (she was driving with air conditioning on). It got up to at least 87 here while I was out there, and was 80 inside until around 9pm.
The broccoli raab bolted really fast and I need to pull it out. The dino kale and the one collard plant that’s left from the winter look like they are about to bolt :(. One of the tomatillos is really huge! The chandlers are, I think, starting to slow down. We have missed a lot of really good berries in the old patch. At the end of the evening I got to plant 10 or 15 feet of sunflowers with T (I think he put about 15 seeds into a deep hole he dug, lol) and I tucked in a few melon seeds, too. I shouldn’t have stayed out until 8 because that did not help him to get to bed. I think I’ve reached peak evening garden time (and thus garden quantity time) and have to start coming in earlier to try to help get him to bed earlier. I’d really prefer to always be outside at sunset. 😦
Today Z finished prepping for 3 rows of winter squash/pumpkins. He was working on chisel plowing a bed or two on the south side when he sheared a bolt on the chisel plow and bent the top link on the tractor! Photos are all his. He thinks that he can probably still use the landscape rake, lol. It’s probably not a good idea! File that under #ridiculousthingsthathappen
Sick day
My child loves to work on irrigation. His dad does 98% of the irrigation work in our garden (plus pretty much all of the tractoring). Z got him outside to watch him put together the new hoes that I got (collinear, wire weeder, and scuffle/hula). Then they went to the garden to check on something w/r/t irrigation. (I was folding laundry and stripping our sheets, largely related to the “sick day” title above). Z had stayed home because had gotten so little sleep…
The child rarely goes into the garden with me. Sometimes he’ll plant seeds with me. But it’s rare. I think it partly might be that when I’m weeding or picking berries, I throw the trash behind me and if he’s in the wrong spot, he gets hit. It’s hard to see behind you when you’re on your knees.
Anyhow, I did get out there this evening and pick some berries. Not a big “good” harvest day, but I picked up a lot of trash from the 2 newer beds. There are a lot of things on the to-do list. I think he might like putting out cucumber beetle traps if he’s home sick again, but it’ll be hard to keep him away from the containers of lure…
Got some crucial weeding done!
This morning I hoed the sunflower bed and some of the tomatoes, and picked a basket of Chandlers (in less than 15 minutes!). I think Z scattered pearl millet seed this morning (from Fedco?). This evening I weeded one of the brassica beds and the beans/corn. Then I headed to the summer strawberries, where I got some good weeding done and picked less than a basket. After that, I moved on to the old strawberry bed and picked some berries on one side of the bed. I had to throw a lot out. I went through and picked up the waste from tonight and whenever I last worked on that side of the bed and it filled half of a 5-gallon bucket.
Not sure how much I can get done on Tuesday, since I have a dentist appointment and T is not feeling well. I keep forgetting/running out of time to fertilize in the morning, so that’s what I’d hope to do.
I found flea beetles infesting the greens this weekend :/. Fortunately, the dill is starting to emerge. That’s almost as good as if I had planted dill, chamomile, marigolds, and whatever else weeks before planting the greens!
Planted more corn and green beans
Today I planted 2 packets of Bloody Butcher corn (PVFS) and 1 packet of org French Garden Bean (PVFS). Picked 4 total baskets of berries (2 chandler in morning). I even got to some of the old berries, some of which appeared to be in excellent shape 🙂
Z mowed the grass in the large empty area in the south side of the field. Can you spot the kitty cat? Maybe if you double click on the image.
I think that the plant in the path near the summer strawberries is, in fact, catnip. Or are cats really that into lemon balm? But lemon balm’s leaves are a deeper green… The cat was really into this plant!
A bird is eating my fava and bell bean seed!
Today I was working in the Chandlers and I heard a repeated loud rustling sound. It was scrub jay eating seeds out of fava bean pods! Grr. That explains why we have so few bell bean seeds left on the bell bean plants 😦 They’ll have to be mowed this weekend. Quail eating seeds in the garden (dill seed?) one day, a scrub jay the next. The cat got something in her eye yesterday and hasn’t been around that much. She’s sleeping in our cleaning rags right now.
I managed to plant the remaining 3 seedlings – Armenian cucumbers – tonight. I also weeded half of one side of the sunflowers and picked the Seascapes. Less than a basket of delicious berries. This morning I picked 2 baskets of Chandlers. It’s time to focus on removing Seascape runners and weeds, rather than spending hours each week doing that for the Chandlers.
The sow bugs are still terrible. Need to fertilize, and water less. I am not the one who turns the water on and off in the morning, tho…
Things are coming along!
Yesterday I started to hoe the sunflower bed and I realized I had better stop because there are some seedlings coming up (not just the bindweed)! I did start putting the compost out in that bed. I hate leaving bare soil! It’s really causing a sow bug problem in the strawberries, though! I think the first sunflowers are the 2 year-old Mammoth ones. The potatoes I planted have also started to come up, as well as the corn and beans.
I need to take out the bell beans that are growing in the newer strawberry beds, but check out all these ladybugs!
This morning I was finally ready to plant more potatoes, and then I realized that all but 2 of the seeds were a bit too squishy. I threw those into the green waste bin along with some bermudagrass. :p I am hoping to get some local potatoes from a guy who lives a couple of towns north of here. He grows a lot of perennials and weird plants. I first met him at a farmers market. 🙂
Today I did a fair bit of thinning of my earlier corn plantings. It’s painful to get rid of what are mostly beautiful, healthy plants (although they were hosting an awful lot of cucumber beetles. need to put those traps out), but hopefully things will get better in terms of pests. maybe i can hide some flower seeds in there. Of course I finished thinning after I’d started a new compost pile! Oh, well.
I need to fertilize. I think Z’s been watering a bit too long (it’s hard because he usually goes and does other stuff while the water is on) and things are a tad bit yellow.
The strawberries get soft too quickly. I think it’s partly just the humidity level in the refrigerator. 😦
Feeling discouraged about the berries
For over a decade I’ve read in Acres USA magazine that you should feed the soil, not the plants. Yet I find myself using a lot of compost when I plant, and even as mulch afterwards, which attracts all manner of bugs – in particular, sow bugs. They love that decomposing stuff. They, along with the slugs, boxelder bugs, etc, etc love to eat my berries because they touch the ground (or weeds) and are easy to get to. Then my fruit is soft, plus maybe my fridge needs adjusting (well, it needs new seals), and then the strawberries can’t even be stored in the refrigerator for 26 hours. 😦
Those 2 baskets of Chandlers never got eaten, and I only got 1 that was not too soft. 😦 I cut it and the berries I picked tonight and froze them. That’s all I can do. I hope someone helps me make jam, because I am too clumsy to try to do it myself!
All I did in the garden today was work on strawberries. Well, I also tried planting some zinnia seed in the sunflowers (well, the cucumbers) and in the tomato bed. I also tried taking old flowerheads off of the borage from the strawberries and scattering the seeds on top of the tomato bed. I’m getting really into the concept of companion planting, but I’m a bit slow to implement it. I got a new book about companion planting that I’ll write more about another time, and I’m reading a really basic intro kindle book at the moment.
We are way behind on planting cover crops. I have tons of seeds to plant! I guess I have 2 available beds right now, but we need to prep some others. And I can’t just mow down the cover crops and plant into the residue, because that just encourages the slugs. Sigh!
Book Review – The Urban Farmer
great review by the author of an even better book (Sustainable Market Farming)!
Book Review – The Urban Farmer: Growing Food for Profit on Leased and Borrowed Land. Curtis Stone, New Society Publishers, $29.95. January 2016 Curtis Stone wrote this valuable book after only about 6 years as owner/operator of Green City Acres, a small commercial vegetable farm in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. He supplies fairly high-end restaurants…
via Book Review – The Urban Farmer — Sustainable Market Farming
Lots of weird bugs
Today I think I found a mystery mint family plant next to the summer strawberry bed. Hoping it’s lemon balm. I didn’t try smelling or tasting it. It’s probably from sometime when T and I were out planting seeds in the summer strawberry bed. Sometimes he prefers to plant outside of the bed. There’s a lot of bindweed and purslane. I haven’t been spending much time over there, as you can tell.
I keep finding weird bugs everywhere, so I have started a photo album of pests in our garden. Today I think I found a lygus bug in the Chandlers. DOH!
I guess I need to figure out what plants the damsel bug likes! Apparently it shows up later in the season.
Check out these gorgeous summer strawberries! I think they are sweet anns. there are a lot of big ones coming along!
Tonight I picked 2 baskets of Chandlers. I weeded a lot and pulled off all the runners I could find. That plus a tour of most of the garden took an hour and a half! I didn’t get to pick old berries because we were trying to get T to bed
farmingmum 